Susan

“In my 20s I prided myself on handling booze better than most. We’d go to pubs and all the girls would stop after a few shots, except for me – I could drink the men under the table. In my early 30s, I was proud that I was a ‘high functioning ‘ drinker. I could easily go days and weeks without drinking. No problem! I loved proving that I had self control, but I also knew there was a reward at the end. Drinking was how I motivated and calmed myself. Then things started to shift, but I still believed it was all fine. I had never been a mean drunk. Never argumentative. I just got a lovely little buzz. Surely there was no harm in that. It was mild and mellow, except I could no longer have a good time without nursing a stiff drink. I had zero patience with people, unless I was tipsy enough, in which case I didn’t care. It took me a long time to acknowledge something was off.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“He’s learned over many painful episodes, that his beautiful, intelligent wife doesn’t do reassurance. Better than that, he ‘s started to understand why. She isn’t mean; it’s her experience of men and her defenses against being let down kicking in. It’s just how she processes challenges. It helps to see these things; he is accruing alternatives to vengeance and anger. Few in this world are ever simply nasty; those who hurt us are themselves in pain.”
― Alain de Botton, The Course of Love

“We are all like clay tablets, chipped around the edges, hiding our little secrets and cracks.
Not everyone, though .
Everyone, I promise you.
Is there such a thing as absolute happiness? Never ending success? A perfect marriage? A quick fix to cure anxiety? We want to believe there is . Then we’re defeated, humbled. We learn to accept there will always be something amiss, something broken, and unless we are kind to ourselves it won’t change, this feeling of incompleteness.”
― Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

“He has a sense of the bravery it takes to live even an utterly mediocre life like his own. To keep all of this going, to ensure his continuuing status as an almost sane person, his capacity to provide for his family financially, the survival of his marriage and the flourishing of his children--these projects offer no fewer opportunities for heroism than an epic tale. He is unlikely ever to be called upon to serve his nation or to fight an enemy, but courage is required nonetheless within his circumscribed domains. The courage not to be vanquished by anxiety, not to hurt others out of frustration, not to grow too furious with the world for the perceived injuries it heedlessly inflicts, not to go crazy and somehow to manage to persevere in a more or less adequate way through the difficulties of married life--this is true courage. This is a heroism in a class all its own.”
― Alain de Botton, The Course of Love